If Rap is food for rat-a-tat, rattle on

My friend’s son, a young man of 22 years is into rap music. His parents are bewildered and worried over his future as he is intent on making a profession out of rapping. The parents have set up a small music workstation in their modest apartment and spent their hard earned money in getting him samplers, drum machines, synthesizers and whatever else he needed for recording his compositions. When they met me a couple of days back, they looked disturbed as they could not make anything of his musical compositions which  he was sending to different music producers in the hope of getting an opportunity to cut an album or an entry into the Bollywood and Kollywood worlds. They told me that that their son was confident of rising high in this field and would not exchange his love for the rapping profession for anything mundane and pedestrian. I liked the pluck of the young man though I knew, for any young man to rise up in this field, (as is the case with all other creative fields), he needed a godfather or huge financial support unless he was unusually gifted,  a musical prodigy like A.R.Rahman or the late Mandolin Srinivas. Even though I am reasonably conversant with trends in modern art, literature and music, my knowledge has not advanced to these contemporary Hip-Hop/Rap genres. In fact I have only a limited understanding and limited appreciation of atonal music that was popular in the first quarter of the 20^th Century with composers like Schonberg, Debussy, Stravinsky and a few others. I could empathize with the anxiety of the parents whose knowledge of music was much less than mine- almost confined to the Carnatic music of the South without an exposure to the classical music of the North, leave aside contemporary Western (and Indian) popular music.

Rap music is certainly not music to the ears of the older generation to which I belong – especially to the generation that had been brought up on classical music which is essentially homophonic with its strong emphasis on balance, beauty and elegance. Classical music with or without words stresses on deep-felt emotions such as love, devotion, peace, tranquility etc.  Though there have been a few changes in the composition of lyrics set to the classical tunes, the classical trend has always been to harmonize words, rhythm and the melodic modes( known as “raga’ in Indian classical music). There is no privileging of one over the other as words are as important as the Taal and the Raga –the rhythm and the melodic mode. Being over a thousand years old, Classical music has evolved into a strong, robust genre  moving from medieval to renaissance to baroque, to classical to romantic, to atonal, to neo-classicism, neo-romanticism, minimalism etc  without losing its inherent homophonic quality. Rap music on the other hand does not lay emphasis on harmony and melody, where the lyrics are on the spur compositions that are often personal, at times vulgar, annoying and inappropriate, programmed to beats and rhythms and does not lend itself easy to decipher. Kolaveri from Kollywood brought rap onto the film world and has since been adopted by many young enthusiastic rap singers.

The emergence of “rap’ in the world of music is similar to the advent of modern art that emerged in the first quarter of the 20^th century, when viewers were dumbstruck as they could not unravel the meaning and mystery of the new paintings. For many of us of the older generation it was like allowing a chicken to run around a canvas with its feet dipped in many coloured ink. Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, a scandalous work portraying a porcelain urinal was according to the artist, meant to shift the focus from the physical art to intellectual interpretation. The experience of a distasteful work of art, he said, was intended to move from mundane reality to the higher echelons of intellectual engagement. In a powerful defence of modern art, Jose Ortega y Gassett , the Spanish philosopher says that 20^th century art unlike classical art is of  “no transcending consequence, of no pretenses “ and replicates Duchamps’ view saying  ““art ought to be full clarity, high noon of the intellect” and frees art from human or divine  interest . Art is seen as a mental pattern, an intellectual process, “art-as art as a concentration of art’s essential nature” and not as representing human nature.

Rap music where words do not signify anything is very much like modern art except that it does not and cannot provide ‘intellectual engagement’ as explained by Duchamp. The beats can make you tap your feet and you are so swayed by the beats and the rhythms that you seldom seek meaning in the words. Kolaveri is a good example of rap music as the new young audience was swayed off its feet by the beats to which the volubility of words provided the added assonance. If purists don’t like it, the fault lies in their attempt to seek meaning where there is none. When someone asked what the song Kolaveri Di meant , the composer said “(It’s) the tune (that) came first. Once I came up with the tune, Dhanush heard and sang the words. The entire process was over in 20 minutes”. Rap music is music for the beats, music for dance, music for collective psyche to experience a universal high-what Carl Jung calls the collective unconscious or the collective instincts which are universal and predates the individual consciousness. So there is a collective form of pure liberation as the audience is on its feet swaying to the rhythms that mesh up with words without attempting to understand its meaning. To look for spiritual transcendence ( this conflicts with Jung’s attempt to equate collective unconscious with primordial spiritual instincts) in rap music is to misread the zrap. Even at the cost of offending the modern lovers of Rap, the truth is rap is a diahorrea of words that follow in quick succession to add to the sound of the beats and rhythm.

The new generation is alive to this hip-hop music. This newfound enthusiasm may not last for long time. Rap will be a period music and is to be welcomed today as a harmless substitute for the more dangerous versions of euphoric state induced by alcohol and drugs. It serves no purpose to compare it with classical music like comparing oranges and apples. It is apt to recall what Samuel Beckett said when he was asked to explain the meaning in his plays. He replied:“"My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended), made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else. If people want to have headaches among the overtones, let them. And let them furnish  their own aspirin."

I realized the extent of generation gap exemplified by the hysteria of  Gen X,Y,Z  over Rap that would last till the Rap gets wrapped up with the emergence of a new genre from Gen Next. To adapt Beckett again, Rap is “nothing to express, nothing with which to  express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express." If Rap is food for rat-a-tat, rattle on.

Discipline and Freedom

St. Stephens versus Devnash Mehta highlights the dilemma as to where to draw the line between discipline and individual freedom and that too in an educational institution. Both are essential for the growth of the institution and   that of the individual, even though they seem to function as co-existent contraries in a context where insistence on discipline conflicts with freedom of expression.  It goes without saying that the corner stone of any healthy institution rests upon these two seemingly co-existent contraries. In his brilliant analysis on Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen raises the question whether freedom leads to development or development contributes to freedom and arrives at the conclusion that freedom is central to development.  Amartya Sen does not limit development to economic growth  but relates it in a holistic way to human development. In his view development is seen as the process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy that include among other things such as right to food, shelter, education, healthcare etc,  political and civil rights that confer on the people the freedom to participate in  political and public discussions. This freedom to enter into open dialogue, debate and discussion allows citizens the right of expression that at the core influences all other freedoms that we enjoy and treasure. In other words, the exercise of freedom is mediated by social, moral and human values, which in turn are influenced by public discussions and social interactions. There is no need to privilege one over the other for both freedom of expression and values influence each other.

The St.Stephens’ controversy is basically an ego-centric clash between the Principal and the student, raising the chicken and egg riddle of whether individual development enhances freedom to express or vice versa.  The college administration represented by the Principal found fault with the E-zine editor Devnash Mehta for going online with the magazine that included an interview with the principal without getting the latter’s clearance. “It is unacceptable” the principal, Mr. Valson Thampu said “that, despite being explicitly told not to publish anything (especially my interview before I had the time to go through and clear the text) you went ahead in defiance. It denotes an awkward failure of education and that is why I cannot take it lightly."

Mehta’s point was that he had submitted the contents to the Principal on Saturday and since he got no comments from him, he assumed that it was fine for him to publish it onlineon Monday. The Principal proceeded with disciplinary action as Mehta refused to apologize because he felt that he had the right to express and the Institution had erred in penalizing him. He went to the court which stayed the suspension of the student till the day of judgement.

The present controversy has stopped short of discussing the contents as it got mired in the debate between right to expression and the right to discipline. Where do we draw the line when in this case, both sides have their own sense of injured freedom? The principal felt as much aggrieved that the student had usurped his freedom to permit publication as the student who felt that his right to express had been curtailed. As an objective observer, I take the cue from Amartya Sen’s argument that the right to freedom of expression is to be mediated by values. An educational institution places a premium on the value of discipline to the institution’s code of conduct. Every student who joins the institution, ipso facto is bound by its regulations. If those rules seem strict or exacting, the student has the option to join another institution. This is applicable to all organizations where to be a part of that unit, one has to follow the rules. It is not fair and just either to one self or to the institution to stay on and defy the set rules unless the enforcement of such rules is unlawful and authoritarian.

Though Mehta had followed the rulebook of submitting the interview with the Principal for clearance, it cannot absolve him of the impropriety of publishing the E-zine without a formal nod from the Principal. He has not deliberately defied the rule book but his assumption that the silence of the Principal meant that he had cleared the content was certainly an error of judgement. On an impartial note, one can also equate the Principal’s silence to disapproval or red flagging the piece. Mehta’s defense of going ahead with the online publication amounted to defiance of authority albeit inadvertently. His protest at being denied freedom of expression cannot nail the authority as he had been given permission to start the E-zine subject to the overall supervision of the principal.

It is here the salient question arises as to how to draw the line between discipline and freedom. The controversy is not about what to express and the right to express, but between exercise of authority and exercise of personal freedom. It is interesting to note that Twitter and Facebook have launched a new initiative to curb abusive tweets and messages that may incite violence among its readers. The point to be understood in this attempt is not to identify what is an abusive language, not to draw the line between good and bad language, but to proscribe what promotes offence, threats and violence against others.

Valson Thampu’s note given above refers to “awkward failure of education”. This is unfortunate as he seems to equate education with discipline. Discipline is not enforcement of rules or the subordination of student to authority. In an educational institution, it promotes trust- the binding force between the student and the authority. Breach of this trust is identified with indiscipline or authoritarianism. The principal’s punitive measure of suspending the student and depriving him of the “good conduct” award shows a streak of wounded authoritarianism. The fact that Mehta had been selected for this award is proof that he was a disciplined student. This action of going ahead with online publication could have been condoned as a single error of judgement  It certainly did not merit strict punishment of a student who had been recognized for his good conduct all through the three years of is graduation. It is a pity that a premier educational institution like St.Stephens has  resorted to high handedness, taking a high moral ground. The college has failed to draw the line between error and discipline especially when the error was not committed in defiance of authority. It almost looks like a willful and deliberate misunderstanding of an over enthusiastic young man who wanted his magazine to be available for a large number of students online. Devnash Mehta’s fault is not so much about his hurried publication as his subsequent criticism of the Principal for stifling his freedom of expression. When he had been given the permission to work on his E-zine, to talk about curbing his individual freedom and considering himself as the victim of authoritarianism seems petulant and immature for a bright and well behaved  young man like Mehta.

It is difficult to draw a line between discipline and freedom. The line can never be a transparent one. Its opacity is enhanced by the different shades of discipline and freedom in any given context. Drawing a line is the first step towards ego clashes because the point where the line has to be drawn differs from person to person.  In any ego conflict, there is always a shadow line that is invisible to others but visible to only to those who are involved in the conflict. Wisdom lies in eradicating these shadow lines and recognizing the two sides of the controversy. No one is perfect as a wingless angel, no one is all knowing and no one is without a blemish. But the root of imperfection, ignorance and inadequacy can be traced to personal ego that suffers from a heightened sense of injustice and victimization. If institutions like Stephens suffer from misreading of a minor aberration,  one can imagine the disaster caused by shadow lines at the macro level between nations- often referred to as LOC or the Line of Control. In our day to day mundane existence, we experience conflicts over exerting jurisdiction on others. Drawing a line- this  far and no further -is a sure recipe for the continued prevalence of  the  authoritarian-victim syndrome  in many parts of the world.

Stepehn’s controversy should be a test case which  could have been avoided if the Principal had shown magnanimity in overlooking an error of judgement and the student had recognized the wisdom of discipline and not misinterpreted it as a paternalistic imposition. Aristotle said:”Through discipline comes freedom” We need to cultivate cognitive and rational  discipline to get freedom from mental claustrophobia  of being in a narrow egocentric space.

Hope deferred and longing for the Tree of Life.

                                                         Hope deferred and longing for the Tree of Life.

             Ten months have gone. The BJP government with its thunderous majority has been in the saddle of governance. Political analysts will converge on TV studios to rate the PM on his 300 days achievements.  There will be statistical analysis sampling 10-12 thousand people across the nation, though for a non statistical mind like mine, such a small number out of a whopping 814million eligible voters  makes it difficult to accept that  this Is  the Voice of India.  As an aam admi – R.K.laxman’s ‘common man’ – I speak on the basis of what I have experienced over the last few months after the new Government had taken over. Like the cigarette packets that come with a statutory warning ( the wisdom of carrying such a warning is now  being questioned) , I wish to sound a prefatory warning that this assessment is purely subjective and I have neither the stature nor the skill to present it as though India has spoken. 

             In these ten months has there been any positive change in the lives of the people, in anticipation of which they had voted the BJP (and its allies that go by the three words NDA) to power? Has there been any thing to affirm pre-election promises with post-election reality? Have ‘the promised “achche din” come? Has the stashed away black money in foreign countries been brought back? Has every Indian got a credit of 15lakhs in his account within one hundred days of BJP coming to power from the seizure of that black money as promised by the PM -designate of that time in his pre-election speeches? Has crime against women abated? Have law and order been restored and fewer crimes are committed? Have the prices come down? Has the foreign policy raised our international stature? Have our neighbours discovered that India is now less of a Big Brother and more of an equable neighbour? Have we now forged strong “alignment policy” swinging with the Chinese President and  hugging the US  President,  shaking hands with the Japanese and simultaneously warming up to the Russians, embracing Pakistan on the one hand and seeking Israel’s friendship on the other, wooing Srilanka despite its covert activities of swooping on Indian fishermen and terrorising the Tamils in the island nation ? Is the nation resounding with new bhai-bhai slogans - something akin to ( even if it sounds anathema to BJP ears) the Nehruvian non-alignment policy of pleasing all and pleasing none?

             All the pre-election promises have been nothing but vacuous rhetoric. There has been not a drop of the promised manna that was promised before elections to fall from a divine government. The promises were made at the right time when people were disappointed with  soaring inflation and a supine, prostrate, toothless, scam-scarred government (that had the added discomfiture of being more sinned against than sinning) though the game changers knew in their heart of hearts that there will be no effective change once they are in power.   

             But since change is the law of nature, there have been some noticeable changes though they may not translate into anything monumental to make a positive difference to the life of the teeming millions of aam admis  like me who dot the Indian nation from North to South, East to West.

             First among the positive changes is there is  no breaking news today on TV about the policies and functioning of various ministries,  in sharp contrast to a leak a day that kept the media censorious  during the UPA/ManmohanSingh’s government. The sound of silence is what the media gets these days and  they anxiously wait for a serving Minister or MP or a member of the BJP and its affiliates to commit a bloomer to latch onto it for their prime time  Big debates on the news channels. The plugging of the leakage in the corridors of power has been very effective to starve the media of its staple diet of sensational revelations. There is no room today for Assanges and Wikileakers (including Savukku Shankar, our home grown Assange who released the 2G tapes) to spring up with revelations-truthful or sensational.

             With the Big Brother watching, the PMO office keeps an eye on all the ministers so that they are hardly seen or heard. The media is singing the chorus from the Skyliners : “Where have they gone?/All the summers we knew/ all the winters we shared/ Where have they gone?” In the previous regime the PM(MMS)  was silent while all the PM’s men indulged in a petulant running debate both within their party and with the world outside through the media.  Today the PM(Narendra Damodardas Modi or simply NDM)is silent on controversial issues that his ministers and party ideologues make, though with a halo of a rockstar, he speaks in foreign lands and his oratory is hailed all over the world while back home, his Mann Ki Baat over radio, the poor cousin of TV is the monthly fare for his own countrymen.

             The third change is the change in the holiday list. Gandhji’s birthday was observed not as a holiday but a Swachh Bharat day. Christmas was observed as Good Governance Day. The government employees –reverentially known as ‘the Babus’ who used to enjoy holidays commemorating birth and death anniversaries of big and small netas  besides festivals of all religions, had their first shock when they were denied these two holidays. They were asked to come to their offices with broom or a pen in hand on these two days.  It is yet to be seen if in the list of holidays for the current year 2015, these two holidays have been  deleted. It will also be interesting if the government comes out with new tags for every festival (including the Indian festivals provided RSS does not scream) to make them specific activities days and set an example to the world that “ We are Indians; we need no holidays”.

             Swachh Bharat campaign replacing Gandhi Jayanti with flashing brooms on spotless clean roads was a neat way of paying homage to the Father of the Nation.  The photo-op sessions were recorded for posterity. Colleges and schools have printed the picture of this day in their brochures and annual magazines. For once on this day, the black top roads in Delhi were visible in all their tarred glory without an iota of dust. The Industrialists and businessmen suddenly remembered that they had Corporate Social Responsibility to discharge and came  up with ideas of dotting the entire map of India with toilets to make Swachh bharat. No one ever wondered about water for the toilets. Ten months have not seen any visible change. The red spits continue on the road and on the walls, the litters are everywhere and the defecation on compound walls (including those that have picture tiles of Ganesh and Lakshmi to act as deterrent from polluting the walls) are as rampant as before. No amount of foreign branded perfumes and deodorants can wash away the foul odour that permeates the Delhi office corridors, the markets , the colleges and schools. Has the mindset of Indians changed as a result of our PM’s much advertised initiative for a changed Swachh bharat?  The NRIs who had applauded the Great Indian initiative of the PM during his address in the Madison Square Garden have come and gone holding their fingers to their nose.  The present stand-off between the AAP government in Delhi state and the BJP government at the Centre raises a pertinent question as to who should wield the broom and who should hold the purse string? In the absence of a clear answer, the unpaid striking broom wielders are sweeping the garbage on to the road to make Delhi the stinking capital of the world.

             What goes up and does not come down? One need not be erudite or educated to answer this question. Even the beggar on the streets holding an emaciated child on her arms and followed by three to four semi starved children has the answer to it. There has been very little attempt to cash on the bonus of oil prices coming down. It looks as though unlike the MMS government that took the full brunt of the phenomenal increase in oil prices and global economic recession, the current economic status seems to paradoxically resemble the snake and the ladder game, where even as the oil prices come down, the prices of everyday consumable commodities scale up the ladder. The inflation has not been arrested at the consumer level though there might have been some reduction in the WPI-wholesale price index. I pay 6 rupee per banana, 12rupees for an orange, not less than 50-60 rupees per kilo of any seasonal vegetable and 68-70 rupees for a litre of milk. The prospect of El Nino playing havoc with this year’s monsoon is worrisome. If autumn, winter and spring prices have spiralled, can monsoon -dry summer prices be far behind?

             Despite all the encouragement for “make in India’,  the cost-pull inflation and demand-supply inflation may retard economic growth and fuel further unemployment- again defeating the very promises that the  PM had made prior to the elections. There has been no visible change in the economic state of the aam admi. Marginally there is cheer for big businessmen and industrialists, but in an overall analysis no positive impact has been there for even the salaried middle class. 

            The other change is a sudden leap into religious fraction that hardly made headlines during the last so many years. After the devastating partition soon after independence, the deadliest violence in recent times has been the Gujarat riots in 2002. That is nearly twelve years behind us. But today there is so much bizarre talk about Love Jihad, Ghar Wapsi, and even about Bharat Ratna-cum-Nobel recipient Mother Teresa to make one wonder why another crusade is being contemplated and this time between Christianity and Hinduism while simultaneously stoking the simmering communal flame between Islam and Hinduism.  The churches are attacked and vandalized. Where is our PM’s clarion call of “ sabke saath, sabka vikas” if such a polarization in the name of religion is actively pursued? The flare up in UP and West Bengal leading to destruction and several deaths have thrown open fissures for communal volcano to erupt all over the country. The secular doctrine that was the founding principle of our Constitution is vilified as ‘sickular’ and there is a clamour to revisit anti- conversion bill that tugs at the constitutional freedom guaranteeing citizen’s right to his faith and his religion. The PM has been trying to soften the communal blows by feeble attempts to rein in the strident fundamentalists in his party, but they seem to be falling on deaf ears.

             Violence against women continues unabated and newspapers fill their cover page with stories of rape, crime and robbery. The headlines during the pre-poll days carried vignettes of PM’s speeches about development. But in a reverse way, the dailies today do not have much to report about development. May be forty weeks is too short a period for any development to be visible. Many projects are in the pipeline but they depend upon the Parliament’s assent to the land Bill whereby lands could be acquired and infrastructures developed for big projects. The land bill makes it easy and profitable for big business to acquire lands from the poor farmer who is asked to part with his meager possession and is  promised compensation of a better life and better employment in lieu of his hard work on the land. It is a catch 22 situation- without land there will be no development and no easing of unemployment. But for the farmer, this is more of a diminishing return to whatever little he had possessed. The PM and his men and women may come up with new strategies to balance farmer’s plight with better economic growth and welfare.

             Good governance, a key promise at the time of election when there was a paralysis of governance has not made any spectacular jump in these months. Maybe there is a little less corruption in high places but corruption is endemic to our people and this is not easy to be wished away. Are the files moving? Has punctuality been put in place?  The online biometric fingerprint attendance system has been tampered with in many offices. The bureaucrats have their own sense of timing that may be at variance with the PM’s and his minister’s intended pace.  Educational policies are more in the nature of eulogizing our ancient wisdom and an insistent return to our roots when we have to spread our branches and make flowers bloom and fruits ripen. There is much talk about our past knowledge about reproductive genetics, cosmetic surgery, flying planes etc without understanding the basic difference between science and technology. The ancient Hindus must have worked on many scientific theories that hold possibility of practical value but it is technology that applied those theories to make new products and inventions available to human society, industrial arts, commercial products and engineering instruments. The application of knowledge for practical ends has been developed and achieved by technology. Hope the new Government does not fight shy of the Western advancements in science and technology, medicine and engineering and build on it with our pride in our ingenuity.

             The foreign policy has not brought any great dividends. Pakistan continues to snipe, Srilanka bans Indian fishermen from coming near its waters, China refuses to yield on border disputes. The recent religious conversions have figured in the Western and European opinions about India and that too not on any flattering term.  It is not enough for a mesmeric talker like our PM to inject vitality to our international relationship, it is also equally incumbent on his partymen and on all of us to resist the practice of cultural and religious atavism. It is time we remember that we have an obligation to cultivate humanity, so succinctly phrased in Sanskrit as Vasudeva Kutumbakam.

              So has there been any change? Not much to gloat or exult, not little to despair and disappointed. The truth is this vast country with a wide disparity in terms of religion, caste, literacy,social and economic status, with people speaking in different languages and following different beliefs , is not easy to govern. It is one thing to hold promise of a Ram Rajya to get to the seat of power,  but it is far more difficult to knit the country where we balance homogeneity in terms of being an Indian with  heterogeneity in terms of our diversity. No single party has a magic wand to swing to bring this balance and so it is the responsibility of every Indian irrespective of his party affiliation and ideology to work together to arrive at the Nehruvian call for Unity in Diversity. Three hundred days are just a beginning. There will be another five times of three hundred days to come. Let us hope changes are there for the better. As the Bible says “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life”(Porverb 13:12)